A personal blog about quilting, sewing and life as a mother. Lots of free tutorials including beginning quilting tutorials, binding tutorials, and other sewing projects like bags, quilt blocks and nursing covers.

Quilt Design Tool from Threadbias

I’m so excited today to share a little bit about a brand-new quilt design resource available online from Threadbias. First of all, if you are not familiar with Threadbias, let me introduce you. Threadbias is a recent online sewing community website, run by real live sewists, where you can connect with groups, find and sell patterns, and be a part of a sewing community. You can create your own free profile any time!

And now Threadbias is launching their brand new Quilt Design Tool. This is a web-based tool where you can go to create your own block and quilt designs. I first heard about this design tool at the Sewing Summit last fall while it was still under construction. I was so impressed with the designers and builder and their vision of creating an intuitive, simple to understand quilt design tool for people like me.

While I would love to someday learn Adobe Illustrator, frankly, it scares the pants off me, and is probably more tech-y than I really need most of the time. I have other quilt design software, but I often feel frustrated by it’s complexity and have only figured out how to do limited things with it. As a result I’ve been anxious to give Threadbias’ Quilt Design Tool a try. And after having played with it this week, I’m already loving it and have signed up for a paid subscription myself.

This is a block I created today. It came together so quickly! I highly recommend watching the simple YouTube tutorials Alex (the Design Tool builder) has created to show you all that the program can do. You can watch all of them in a short amount of time and will suddenly have the ability to create lots of snazzy new block and quilt designs.

And this is the quilt design I made from my block. After designing your blocks/quilts in the Quilt Design Tool you can easily export them as jpg or vector images. And feel really cool about yourself.

Another one of the great features of the Quilt Design Tool are all the swatches of current and recent fabrics from most of the major fabric manufacturers available to use in your designs. You can choose fabrics from the site and add them to your profile “stash”. Then they are ready to use when you are designing. Most of the fabric ‘swatches’ show up so nicely in the digital designs, but I did notice a few of the fabric images repeated with the ruler or looked a little ‘out of whack’. I’m not worried about it though. It’s very obvious that customer satisfaction is a high priority to the folks at Threadbias. Because the tool is so new, there are a few bugs to work out, but there are updates made to the Design Tool daily and new capabilities being added all the time. Alex, the builder, is very engaged in the Design Tool forum, welcomes suggestions and fixes issues sometimes by the next day. Clearly this is a tool that the folks at Threadbias want to be useable and helpful, and simple and intuitive enough for people like me to use.If you’re looking for a computer quit design option, I highly suggest you check it out. You can try the limited-capability tool for free when you sign-up for a free account on Threadbias. Full access to the Quilt Design Tool is available for a monthly $10 subscription which you can cancel at any time.And today, Threadbias is giving away a free month-long subscription (or a one month credit if you’re already a subscriber) to one of you readers! To enter to win, simply leave a comment on this post. Giveaway is open until Thursday, April 4, midnight MST. GIVEAWAY CLOSED.

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Comments

I&#39;m so happy to hear about this website. I have been curious about quilt design software, but unsure about making a purchase because of the cost and the complexity of the program. This sounds great!

I have been on Threadbias for almost a year and it is an amazing community for support and inspiration! I cannot believe how it has changed and improved my quilting life. And that was before the Design Tool came to be…I have been using it for over a month now and have already designed and made quilts using it! I have never used anything other than graph paper to design quilts and this is an

Wow this sounds almost to good to be true. A system to make your own blocks (quilts) that does not cost a fortune, hmmm I am hesitant because I am not tecky but is it really user friendly? Thanks for info on this I might just check it out.

Hi SIMPLESEW! Thanks for trying out the Quilt Design Tool. The tool tips boxes that give the description of what each thing does should stay as long as your mouse is hovered over the icon so you have time to read. Please let me know if that isn&#39;t working for you.

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Copyright 2008-2013 Amy Smart/DiaryofaQuilter.com. All photos and content are my own unless otherwise noted. I love when people link to or pin my content, only please cite the original post. Please do not reproduce or publish copies of my patterns and tutorials. Contact me with any questions or concerns. Thank you!